Solar was published by Jonathan Cape in March 2010 and is McEwan’s funniest novel — a savage comedy about a Nobel laureate, Michael Beard, who is fat, vain, sexually compulsive, intellectually lazy, and morally bankrupt, yet stumbles into the possibility of solving climate change through a solar energy technology he has essentially stolen from a dead colleague. The novel follows Beard through the Arctic (a disastrous climate-awareness junket), through multiple romantic catastrophes, and through the commercialization of his stolen technology.
McEwan uses Beard’s personal failings as a metaphor for humanity’s response to climate change: we know what we should do, we have the intelligence to do it, but we are too greedy, too lazy, and too distracted by our appetites to act.
The Novel
The story unfolds in three parts spanning 2000 to 2009. In Part One, Beard’s fifth marriage is collapsing — his wife Patrice is having an affair with the builder renovating their house. Meanwhile, a young postdoctoral researcher named Tom Aldous, who has developed a promising artificial photosynthesis technology at Beard’s Centre for Renewable Energy, dies in an accident at Beard’s flat — an accident involving Patrice’s lover, a frozen animal skin, and a slapstick chain of events that McEwan orchestrates with the timing of a French farce. Beard allows the wrong man to be convicted of the death and appropriates Aldous’s intellectual property.
Part Two follows Beard to the Arctic, where a junket of artists and scientists is meant to experience climate change firsthand. The Arctic scenes are the novel’s comic highlight: Beard, hopelessly ill-equipped for polar conditions, gets his penis frozen to his zip while trying to urinate outdoors (a scene of excruciating physical comedy), fights with a fellow artist over a bag of crisps, and generally embodies the complacent Western consumer who cannot summon the will to change even when confronted with overwhelming evidence.
Part Three covers Beard’s attempt to build a solar energy plant in New Mexico, his increasingly tangled romantic life (he is simultaneously involved with multiple women, all of whom are pregnant or recently delivered), and the unravelling of his lies about Aldous’s technology. The ending — multiple catastrophes converging at once — is both comic and bleak.
The Climate Change Novel
Solar was one of the first major literary novels to tackle climate change as its central subject, and its approach was deliberately provocative. Rather than writing a earnest, apocalyptic warning, McEwan chose comedy — arguing that satire was a more effective vehicle for the subject than tragedy. The choice was controversial. Some environmental writers felt that making climate change funny trivialised the crisis; others appreciated McEwan’s insight that the problem of climate change is not ignorance but inertia, and that comedy is better equipped than tragedy to illuminate the gap between knowing and doing.
Critical Reception
Reviews were mixed. The comedy was widely praised — the Arctic penis scene and the crisps fight became talking points — but some critics felt the novel was too schematic, its central metaphor (Beard’s appetites = humanity’s appetites) too neat. James Wood, in The New Yorker, found it “clever but not moving.” Others admired its ambition and its willingness to make a repulsive character the vehicle for serious ideas.
Collecting Solar
First edition (2010, Jonathan Cape, London): Boards with dust jacket.
Approximate market values:
- Fine/Fine in dust jacket: $50–$150
- Signed first edition: $100–$300
- Without jacket: $10–$20
Value trajectory (2016–2026): Minimal appreciation. This is a recent McEwan novel without major prize wins. Signed copies are widely available.
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest. If the novel’s climate-change subject ages into prescience, values may increase. Signed copies should reach $200–$500.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Michael Beard based on anyone? McEwan has said Beard is a composite rather than a portrait. Elements of his character draw on various public scientists — the intellectual laziness, the coasting on early achievement, the personal chaos — but no single model has been identified.
Is this McEwan’s funniest novel? By general consensus, yes. Amsterdam has dark comedy; Nutshell has wit. But Solar’s comedy is broader, more sustained, and more physical — the Arctic scenes rival Kingsley Amis at his best.